Choose wisely

 

     I'm not rich. But I understand one often becomes rich by putting money first. You ignore your family, your own health, the marvelous and varied world, and focus on doing the thing that makes you rich.
     But I figure, once wealthy, the whole point is that then you are then freed by those riches. You can do what you like, thumb your nose at convention and authority, act on whims. Like buying a major American newspaper. As vile as Amazon can be, as a company, lining up ambulances to cart away workers who collapsed from heat exhaustion, and forcing them to wear adult diapers because they couldn't take bathroom breaks, I always said, "Well, Jeff Bezos bought the Washington Post." It seemed exculpatory, as the lawyers say. He was forgiven.

Katherine Graham, by Diane Walker (Nat'l Portrait Gallery)

    And now he cravenly spiked the Post's endorsement of Kamala Harris so as to not affect his financial relationship with the perhaps future president. To ensure he can earn even more money. That he doesn't need. The kind of prophylactic groveling that greased the skids toward fascism. Plus, Bezos is a smart man — he must realize what Trump is. How many reputations he's ruined. Elon Musk could cure cancer and establish a thriving colony on Neptune and he'd always be, to me, the imbecile giddly prancing around Trump. You can't unring that bell. 
     Shortly after the shock of Bezos's moment of cowardice — a failure which will haunt him like that of Lord Jim — my pal, two-time Pulitzer Prize winner Gene Weingarten, sent out this week's blog post. I don't want to seize it — you can read the full thing here on his excellent blog. But I believe I can quote two paragraphs without doing him violence. He's talking about Katharine Graham, the publisher of the Post:

     In June 18, 1971, The Washington Post began publishing The Pentagon Papers at a time of extraordinary tension between the media and Richard Nixon’s occultly corrupt government. The decision had been made the day before by the only person with the power to do it: Katharine Graham. Printing the stolen material was possibly a felony. The New York Times had just been enjoined by a court from publishing the documents. It was not unlikely that Nixon’s Justice Department would seek criminal penalties from The Post for breaching that order.
     During a dinner party at the same Georgetown mansion, with the very survival of her newspaper at stake — the government wielded enormous economic power over the media, particularly through licensing of their broadcast affiliates — Mrs. Graham considered a few moments, then gave the order in five two-word bites: “Go ahead. Go ahead. Go ahead. Let’s go. Let’s publish.” When her lawyers warned her that the government might come after the editors with subpoenas for the papers, and they might face prison for refusing to cough them up, she ordered that the documents be delivered to her house, so she and she alone would be the one to defy the subpoena. Let them put an old grandmother in jail, she said.

   Courage is remembered. And cowardice is never forgotten. Choose wisely.